


Mercy

by Dearly_Divided



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bunker Fic, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Power Imbalance, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:21:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23985232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dearly_Divided/pseuds/Dearly_Divided
Summary: The sky was on fire and through the tears, Rook almost wanted to laugh. She’d fought for weeks, she’d killed peggies, she’d slaughtered her friends and now-Now she was going to die because of some fucking bomb, less than a hundred feet from the safety of the bunker she’d killed her friends in. Maybe Joseph had been right; maybe there was a God and maybe, just maybe, this was his punishment.Rook wondered whether or not Jacob would be pissed, all that work he’d poured into her for nothing.And so she laughed, laughed in that hoarse, broken voice, tears spilling from her eyes as the earth shook beneath her.
Relationships: Female Deputy | Judge/Jacob Seed
Comments: 16
Kudos: 107





	Mercy

How the fuck did everything go so wrong?

There was music, that damned _fucking_ song, and Eli-

A searing pang ripped through her heart, stealing her breath as the memories came flooding back, the memories of what she’d done under the grips of Jacob’s music.

She’d killed them, like a beast driven mad by bloodlust, she’d slaughtered them all. Eli who trusted her, Eli who’d fought Tammy to let her stay.

Eli who was her _friend_.

It almost felt like a dream, but through the red haze and the soft, warped melody playing through her head, she saw it happen. Eli didn’t have time for fear or bitter regret, not before she shot him between the eyes like it was an execution. 

She supposed it was. 

Seeing him fall, she remembered the shock, the sick, twisted guilt that settled in her stomach at seeing her friend die. It should have been enough to snap her out of it… but it wasn’t. The others came. Jacob had mocked them once, said that they were nothing but a housewife and a teenager playing at being soldiers. He hadn’t been wrong. They weren’t soldiers, not like she was. Anyone could pull the trigger on a gun, it wasn’t difficult, but killing was a skill, an art form. She was a honed weapon, all sharp edges and ruthless efficiency.

It hadn't been fair to unleash her upon them.

They never stood a chance against her, not really. Wheaty, too enraged to think clearly, Tammy too slow to stop her. The others… the others had just been cannon fodder. 

Only when the last of them had laid broken and bleeding at her feet did Rook’s sanity return. It was worse than the trials. Those men and women, she knew that they were real, but… it never felt that way, not until she woke up afterwards, retching into the dirt. The people she killed, the ones Jacob forced her to kill, they’d disappeared in puffs of smoke as she shot them, their faces hazy and unclear.

Her friends in the Wolf’s Den though, their faces had been all too vivid as she cut them down, one by one. Their pain, the disbelief then the rage and fear - she watched it all bleed across their faces in those last moments. Maybe that was what snapped her out of her frenzy, not Jacob’s mocking praise as he stood between the bodies and smiled down at her, but the absolute shattering of her soul as she stared at the unseeing eyes of her friends, dead by her hand. They’d trusted her, trusted her to keep them and their secret safe, and she’d failed them all.

Eli most of all.

And she’d emerged from the bunker, soaked in blood and wrath and the world had been red.

What happened next, that she was a little blurry on. It wasn’t Jacob’s madness that drove her up that ridge, lashing out like some wild, wounded animal. She couldn’t remember how many men there were that stood between her and him, only that by the time she reached the crest there were none left and her rifle was spent.

Jacob knew she wanted to kill him, hell, if her mind hadn’t been so warped with fury and grief and guilt, she might have realised that she was playing right into his hand. Oh, he wasn’t just going to bear his throat to her knife or roll over and beg for it, but if he’d trained her as well as he thought he had, well…

She hadn’t remembered the mocking words he’d spoken, only that they fuelled the fire that raged through her veins. 

He’d seemed amused as she’d tossed aside her rifle and pulled out the hunting knife she’d had strapped to her thigh, so similar to his. 

And while Jacob had been prepared to die on that hill, so too had Rook. Everything she’d done up until that point, every life she’d saved and every outpost she’d taken had been a desperate attempt to keep people alive. To keep herself alive. She wasn’t an idiot, like Jacob she understood how this worked. The very moment she’d slipped those cuffs around Joseph’s wrists, she’d been marked. Either they died, or she did. 

She’d fought to live, to fucking survive against the cult, against every man and woman they’d sent to hunt her down. She hadn’t broken that first time she’d found herself in John’s bunker, his sweet, poisoned smile as he pried open her shirt remaining in her mind long after she’d left the Valley behind. When Faith had taken her to the Bliss, let her wander in a daze and pledge her devotion as she leapt from the statue, she’d pulled herself out of that too. She’d suffered Jacob’s trials, pushed down the hazy memories of smoky figures and that god damned song ringing in her ears. 

With everything they’d thrown at her, the only thought that echoed in her head was ‘ _survive_ ’. 

For the first time since she’d walked out of his brother’s church, Rook didn’t give a flying fuck whether or not she lived at all, so long as he died. 

She was a broken, wild thing as she launched herself at him, not caring about the gun in his hands. Through her tears she screamed, drawing that knife back, and Jacob, tossing his own rifle aside, had simply grunted as he caught her, one hand grabbing at her wrist, squeezing under the blade clattered to the rocks below. 

There, standing on the edge of that rocky outcrop, he held her tightly.

“Did’ya miss me that much, Dep?” was all he said, his teeth glinting under the midday sun as he bared them in a smirk.

Rook opened her mouth in a snarl, words foul and vitriolic on the very tip of her tongue, but something had stopped her-

The resounding boom followed by a blast.

The flash of blinding light.

The shockwave that followed.

And Jacob had thrown her-

No… he’d been knocked back by the shockwave, he’d lost his grip on her and she’d fallen.

Pain had lanced through her leg as she’d landed, rolling awkwardly down the rocky slope as the mushroom cloud bloomed ominously in the sky and she’d watched helplessly as the wave of destruction rippled out across the red sky.

There was screaming in the distance, an alarm blaring, but all Rook could focus on was the blinding pain in her thigh and the impending blast that would surely do far, far worse than a broken leg.

The sky was on fire and through the tears, Rook almost wanted to laugh. She’d fought for weeks, she’d killed peggies, she’d slaughtered her friends and now- 

Now she was going to die because of some fucking bomb, less than a hundred feet from the safety of the bunker she’d killed her friends in. Maybe Joseph had been right; maybe there was a God and maybe, just maybe, this was his punishment.

Rook wondered whether or not Jacob would be pissed, all that work he’d poured into her for _nothing._

And so she laughed, laughed in that hoarse, broken voice, tears spilling from her eyes as the earth shook beneath her.

It should have been the end of it.

She was utterly helpless.

No weapons, not that they’d do her any good now. Her leg was broken, she could crawl, but she knew she wouldn’t reach the Wolf’s Den in time. Her friends, the ones still alive, were so far away - quietly, she prayed that they’d all made it somewhere safe in time - but her own luck had finally run out. 

Maybe it was a relief. 

Was it cowardly to hope that when it finally caught up with her, her death wouldn’t hurt?

Yet, as her eyes slowly closed in calm acceptance a shadow fell over her, and Rook glanced up just in time to see the butt of that familiar red rifle bearing down on her. Even at the end of the world, it seemed that Jacob hadn’t been content to let something else steal her death from his hands.

How greedy.

A bullet would have been kinder, but Rook welcomed the beckoning end regardless.

***

Rook wasn’t religious, never had been. She’d never believed in any kind of an afterlife. 

She hadn’t expected to wake up anywhere, least of all on a cot in a bunker she knew all too well - the Wolf’s Den. For one single horrifying moment, she wondered whether she’d been wrong, and this was hell - trapped to spend eternity alone in the bunker where she’d lost all sense of herself and murdered her friends. The air was thick, and Rook could smell the rust of drying blood, almost taste it on her tongue.

But-

There was a pain in her leg, a slow, burning ache that was growing harder and harder to ignore with each passing second. She was lying down, her leg propped up on some pillows, two wooden slats strapped against her thigh - a makeshift splint. Somehow that detail seemed a little unnecessary for eternal damnation, which led her to-

“Ah, good. You’re awake.”

Rook swallowed, ignoring the dry scratchiness of her throat, and glanced to the doorway. Sure enough, there he stood, Jacob Seed, leaning against the metal doorway with his arms folded across his chest, smirking down at her.

Her heart skipped a beat as cold dread pooled in her stomach. Instincts overrode everything else, and Rook lurched, reaching for weapons she didn’t have and when she couldn’t find them she tried to move, shambling her body up the bed to put as much distance between them as she possibly could - or at least she would have, if the slightest twitch of her leg hadn’t sent a wave of searing agony tearing through her body. Rook bit back a scream, her fingers wrapping around her thigh like claws as she curled up in on herself, squeezing her eyes shut as she fought against the nausea that threatened to make her vomit.

“Hey, hey, easy there, Dep,” he crooned as he crossed the threshold, and as Rook pried an eye open she saw him walk towards her, palms open and up in a gesture of peace. She might have believed it, if it wasn’t for that fucking grin of his - the wolfish glint that shone in his eyes as he regarded her. “Sit, _relax_ , I won’t bite.”

She was trapped, cornered and defenceless, and thanks to her leg, next to useless in a fight. “Get the hell away from me,” she hissed from between clenched teeth, her fingers still clutching at her broken leg.

Jacob just laughed, a chuckle that set her teeth on edge as he dropped into a crouch beside the bed. She held her breath as those icy blue eyes studied her face, staring at her much the same way he had that first night that he’d taken her. He cocked his head, “Is that any way to treat the man who just saved your sorry ass?”

The smart, sensible thing to have done would have been to keep her mouth shut, do as she was told and pray that eventually his guard would slip and she’d have a chance. 

But Rook wasn’t that kind of girl. No, she was pissed and in pain and being sensible was low on her list of priorities. So she bared her teeth right back, “You expect me to _thank_ you?” she asked, her voice quiet and shaking, but deadly calm all the same.

He shrugged, “Expect? No. I know you too well for that, Dep, but I have to admit, it would be a nice change.” He winked at her, and Rook felt a wave of hatred wash over her. “You’re not really the gratitude showing type though, are you honey? Never once showed an _ounce_ of gratitude for everything I’ve done for you.”

He was close enough that she could punch him, but even if the blow did land it was going to cause her a hell of a lot more pain than it would him. So instead Rook just reared her head back and with all the grace and dignity of a pissed off lady, spat at him and snarled like a hellcat.

“There, take your gratitude and go fuck yourself with it.”

She braced herself for the answering blow, but she told herself that she wouldn’t flinch away from it. If anything, she had Jacob to thank for that - Rook knew better than to show weakness, even when she was vulnerable. 

But the strike never came.

Jacob’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly, enough to send a shiver down Rook’s spine, and slowly he lifted his hand to his scarred face, brushing away her saliva with his thumb, wiping it against the rough material of his army jacket. 

And then he laughed, the tension across his face breaking as his smile widened. He crept in closer, sticking out his index finger and shaking it at her, “There she is, there’s my girl. You had me worried for a minute there, Rook. Thought I’d finally managed to break you”

Rook glared at him. “Why are you here?”

If it was to kill her, he’d had the perfect opportunity to do that when he’d had her at his mercy as the bomb fell-

The bomb.

Her stomach dropped, panic spiking through her blood choking at her throat, making it hard to breathe. How could she forget the blast, the shockwave that had damn near crippled her? 

The image of the growing mushroom cloud flashed before her eyes - the sky burning as the trees around them shook and blew apart...

Rook’s fingers dug into the denim of her jeans as the blood drained from her face, her heart pounding painfully against her ribs as she tried to draw in a jagged breath, again and again, but there was no air.

Her friends, her family, Hope County - it was all… it was all gone, it had to be.

Everything, everything gone.

She couldn’t _breathe_.

“The-the bomb,” she whispered, her wide, horrified eyes flickering up to meet Jacob’s gaze.

The smug little smirk he wore was gone, there was nothing remotely humorous or lighthearted in his face as he regarded her. No, Jacob didn’t mock her as he reached out and after hesitating for just a second, placed his hand on her shoulder, squeezing it with a gentleness she hadn’t expected of him.

“The bomb,” he confirmed with a grim nod. “You know it wasn’t just a normal blast, don’t you, Dep?”

Rook squeezed her eyes shut as she swallowed, her chest still heaving with the effort of drawing air into her lungs. “Yes,” she gasped.

Nuclear, it had to be nuclear. T-that meant… 

Jacob frowned, “Look at me.”

She didn’t- couldn’t.

The fingers around her shoulder tightened, not enough to hurt, but enough so that she couldn’t ignore them, “ _Look at me_.”

Her eyes shot open. “Everything outside that bunker door,” he threw a thumb over his shoulder to the entryway behind him, “is fucked. The world went to shit.” His words were blunt, but they weren’t cruel. As Rook stared into his eyes, she understood perfectly what he wouldn’t say, either out of kindness, or simply because rubbing salt into the wounds wouldn’t do either of them any good now.

_Joseph was right._

Maybe it wasn’t the Collapse they were expecting, but it was a collapse all the same.

“Breathe, Rook.” The hand on her shoulder grazed up along her neck to cup her jaw, the rough, calloused pad of his thumb running across her cheek. “Breathe.”

The Collapse had come, her friends were probably all dead, the world outside was burning and Rook, Rook was trapped in a bunker with-

She froze.

Jacob must have felt the sudden tension in her muscles, because he paused his ministrations. 

“Why am I here?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper. The panic that clawed its way up her throat didn’t recede, but it gave way to a new emotion - pure, unadulterated fear. 

Not for what was happening outside those reinforced steel doors, but at the thoughts of what a man like Jacob Seed could (and would) do to her without his brother to keep him in check.

Why give her the mercy of a quick death when he could continue to play? 

She served no purpose anymore - she wasn’t a threat to him or his family. She couldn’t be his soldier, not in here, so what was left to do but finish the job that he’d started? He wouldn’t need to hurt her to break her, he hadn’t with Staci. There was no escape, no way out, even if she was willing to face the radiation and devastation that waited for her beyond the bunker doors. She was trapped, entirely at his mercy, especially with her broken femur.

And suddenly, Rook wished that she’d died out there on the mountain instead. Surely it had to be better than whatever fate was waiting for her at the hands of the soldier.

Without even realising it, Rook had begun to shake.

Jacob watched the fear play out across her face, the pallor slipping from her cheeks, the slight trembling of her bottom lip, even as she bit down on it, but still, she didn’t pull away from his touch. He’d done awful things to her, nothing worse than he’d done to others, but awful nonetheless. He’d seen her rage, her determination, her frustration and her hatred as she’d run his trials. Even when she’d slipped from his grasp, he’d still been watching - he’d witnessed her joy, her laughter, he’d even seen the unguarded affection she’d bestowed on her friends. Not once had Jacob ever glimpsed her fear. She didn’t have to speak her thoughts aloud to know what it was that scared her so very much. His jaw clenched.

“You really think I brought you in here with me to, what? Hurt you? _Torture_ you?” he asked, his voice cold and clipped.

Rook’s eyes, though still wide and frightful, were as sharp as knives as she stared back at him. “Didn’t you?”

He huffed, dropping his hand from her cheek and pushing himself back upright. “No.”

“Forgive me if I have a little trouble trusting your word, Jacob.” Even in her fear, she wouldn’t back down, not when she still had that hatred and anger burning in her gut. She hadn’t forgotten what he’d done - not just to her, but _them_ as well. She didn’t want to think about what Jacob had done to their bodies, if anything at all. Maybe it was a mercy that she couldn’t walk, she didn’t think she’d be able to handle seeing their bodies littering the floor of the bunker outside, their cold lifeless eyes staring at her in silent condemnation.

_Your fault._

Jacob just eyed her, lying there still as a rock on the cot, glaring right back at him. “Have I ever lied to you, Rook?” he asked instead.

She scoffed, tearing her eyes away from him to stare resolutely at the wall instead.

For a moment he didn’t speak, but neither did he attempt to make a move to leave. Rook didn’t need to look over to know that he was staring at her - she could feel the weight of his gaze on her with every passing second. Then, eventually, he breathed a deep sigh. “I don’t expect you to trust me, don’t really give a shit whether you do or not to be honest. I know what I am, the monster you see me as.” He shook his head with a grunt, “But for all the shit I’ve put you through, I never once lied to you - not about my plans, not about what I’d do to you, not about your goddamn _purpose_.”

Rook refused to acknowledge him, focusing instead on the pounding, throbbing ache of her leg, clinging to the pain rather than facing Jacob and his lies. 

He made a low sound in the back of his throat. “Doesn’t really matter one way or the other, I ‘spose. You’re stuck here with me, honey. Just you ‘n me, until this shit clears itself up.” She flinched as his smirk returned, though there was an edge to it, a hardness that cut right through her. Whether or not he noticed, Jacob pressed on, jabbing his index finger against his chest with a growl. “I’m all you have down here, sweetheart. There’s nothing left for you outside, nowhere for you to go, no one to turn to but _me_. One way or another, you’ll realise that I’m not gonna hurt you, and seven years is a long, long time to hold a grudge.”

He turned without another word, intent on stalking off to god only knew where, but just as he reached the doorway, Rook broke her self imposed silence.

“Why did you do it then?”

Jacob paused, glancing back over his shoulder with an unreadable look on his face.

Rook swallowed, licking her lips before speaking again, “I-if not to hurt me… then why did you save me? Why bring me here when it would have been far easier just to leave me to die?”

For a long moment, Jacob just stared at her, those impassive blue eyes bearing down on her. Then, without a word, he simply turned and walked away.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you guys liked it! Comments and kudos are always appreciated!


End file.
